The Boundaries of the Human in Medieval English Literature

Animals and wild men are everywhere in medieval culture, but their role in illuminating medieval constructions of humanity has never been properly explored. This book gathers together a large number of themes and subjects (including Bestiary, heraldry, and hunting), and examines them as part of a unified discourse about the body and its creative transformations. Human and animal are terms traditionally opposed to one another, but their relationship must always be characterized by a dynamic instability. Humans scout into the animal zone, manipulating and re-shaping animal bodies in accordance with their own social imagining–yet these forays are risky since they lead to questions about what humanity consists in, and whether it can ever be forfeited. Studies of birds, foxes, game animals, the wild man, and shape-shifting women fill out the argument of this book, which sheds new light on works by Chaucer, Gower, the Gawain-poet, and Henryson, as well as showing that many less familiar texts have rewards that an informed reading can reveal.

Introduction; The Bestiary: Establishing Ground Rules; Birds: The Ornament of the Air; The Fox: Laying Bare Deceit; The Heraldic Image; Bodies in the Hunt; A Reading of The Knight's Tale; The Wild Man 1: Figuring Identity; The Wild Man 2: The Uncourtly Other; Women and the Wild; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index

Dorothy Yamamoto is a freelance writer and editor